


Walking the Path

by Mattrimion



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game)
Genre: Action/Adventure, F/F, Female Protagonist, Femslash, Futanari, Multi, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-19
Updated: 2018-09-19
Packaged: 2019-07-14 09:12:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16037405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mattrimion/pseuds/Mattrimion
Summary: Katarina a mountain born, twice torn from a mothers love. She travels to Kaer Morhen and convinces her surrogate uncle to train her. Will take place in the years after Garlet's disappearance, but before his return in the first game.





	Walking the Path

I was but a babe when Vesemir found me. He’d taken a job in a small town in Valhad near the Dragon Mountains. A Royal Wyvern had taken to preying on the local farm folk and Vesemir had tracked it to its nest deep into the Mountains. After making sure it was alone, he slew the beast before taking its head for conformation. On his way back through the passes he’d stumbled across a woman curled up under the cover of a small rock outcropping. The woman clothed in the remnants of fur was bedraggled, wounded and shivering.

Vesemir approached cautiously in-case it was a trap. Bandits would often use women who appeared to be wounded or in need to set a trap. 

As the sound of his boots scrapping the rocky ground reached the women, he watched her stiffen before drawing a dagger in a shaky hand while clutched a small bundle to her chest. This was now mere trap, the women was badly hurt. Deep gashes marred he body, her skin was a sickly pale and her lips a deep blue. Even with the distance between them Vesemir knew she was dying. The dagger wavered dangerously in her hand, before falling from her grasp. She frantically tried to reclaim it but her hand just fumbled weakly at the hilt.

Crouching down Vesemir gently took her hand in his, her skin was like ice. Bruise’s and grime marred her angular face. Defiant startling silver eyes stared at him through her wet blood red hair. She may have been wounded and on deaths door but she had not been broken. Vesemir tried to evaluate he wounds but she pulled away. “Do not waste your time on me low-lander. I’m not long for this world.” she spoke surprisingly clearly considering her state. “Let me die in peace with my child” sure enough there I was wrapped in a fur blanket that despite the weather had remained dry. Somehow despite the pouring sleet, the occasional crack of lighting and rumble of thunder. I was sleeping soundly. At the time I was perhaps around a year old.

“You intend for your child to die with you then.” Vesemir was curious. Judging by the way she’d no doubt kept the baby as dry as possible, she probably loved it terribly. Most mothers under those circumstances would go to great lengths to save their child, but this one intended hers to die with her.

“Better to die in the hands of one who loves her most, then be subjected to the pain and radical that would be follow her around among the Low-Lands or death by my own people, for just being who she it.” she curled up tighter around me.

Most people would have just left it at that. Times were hard and they had to see to their own first. But Vesemir was not most people. He was a witcher and though witchers were considered heartless, he was not heartless enough to leave this child to die alone in the mountains with her mother. He would find it a home on his way back to Kaer Morhan. Reaching forward Vesemir gently removed me from my mother’s arms. She tried to resist, but was far too week. “I cannot take her with me, but I’ll try finding her a suitable home.” 

As Vesemir was standing, about to leave. The women reached out and grasped his arm with surprising strength. “I may not be able to stay with you, but know that I love you.” She stroked my cheek lovingly. “My little Katarina” she tucked a necklace inside my blankets, before falling back, never to move again. 

As a baby I interested Vesemir. After delivering the head and collecting the bounty Vesemir took me to a dear friend of his. Not once during the trip did I cry. Not when I was hungry or needed my wrappings changed. 

It was during the first time this happened that Vesemir learned what my mother’s was afraid of, if someone had taken me in. I appeared to be a normal baby girl aside from one key difference; I had both male and female genitalia. A surprise though it might have been, but not unheard of. It was a rare case that most people just considered an evil mutation. Often times the child would be killed and sometimes even the mother would be as well for birthing such a creature. Vesemir didn’t believe in such fancies however and treated me as he would any other baby girl, though he didn’t know much more then how to feed and change me when needed.

He dropped me off at his friend’s house, one Zelda Oakheart. An aging woman of thirty-five years, Zelda lived on the outskirts of the city of Aedd Gynvael which had been erected on elven ruins. After he explained the situation, Zelda was overjoyed to take me in, even with my oddity. She’d always wanted a child, but due to some unnamed circumstances she was infertile and could not bear her own. 

For the next ten years Zelda raised me and I took her last name in gratitude. I may not have known my birth mother, but Zelda had taken it upon herself to fill that void and I am forever grateful for it. A Surprising addition to my time growing up with Zelda was that Vesemir came too visited on his way to and from Kaer Morhen. He would often tell me stories of his hunts and of the world, and though I was but a child he only held back the more grisly details. 

Sadly the good times were not to last and Zelda died a few months after my tenth name day. A scuffle had transpired at the market one day and Zelda being the good women she was, was fatally stabbed while trying to help. Instead of going to orphanage or becoming a street urchin like every other child would have, I packed the essentials and made my way towards Kaer Morhen. Vesemir had told Zelda the path and when I was old enough to understand she told me. I stayed off the roads and kept to countryside. I made sure to avoid camps or any sign of monsters, often going the long way round never trusting anyone or anything. I ate what I could along the way. Plants and mushrooms mostly. Vesemir had often told me the different edible plants and mushrooms. I had lost track of the days the journey took with only one goal driving me. Get to Kaer Morhen.

And I did after many tiring days and many restless nights, which had only gotten more tiring and slightly less restless when I reached the mountain passes. But the half ruined fortress was empty, which meant Vesemir had yet to return for the winter. I took what victory’s I had though and found an intact bed to collapse into. Luckily Kaer Morhen was well stocked so food was of no worry while I waited. The only enemy I now faced was boredom, which I combated with spending most of my time in the Library, though the books it contained, I either had to fight to get through or had to put down and come back later once my stomach had settled. The books more often than not served to keep me up most nights. Not because I couldn’t put them down, but because of what was entered in detail among the pages. The books contained detailed and often gruesome accounts of different monster abilities and habits, while also offering different ways to combat and kill them given the situation. But even as I had to step away to take a breath, I found the idea of being a monster hunter fascinating and would soon return. 

I was alone in Kaer Morhen for perhaps a few weeks before I had company. Only it was not Vesemir. Vesemir had never really gone into great detail about witchers themselves so the fact that he wasn’t the only one that used Kaer Morhen never came up.

The second witcher I ever met was Eskel and boy was it awkward. Upon hearing the sound of doors opening and closing I had gone running, eager to see Vesemir. It was only due to Eskels skill with a blade that he managed to refrain from removing my head from my shoulders. After I had been interrogated and he had learned of my connection to Vesemir he let me go and he then proceeded to bar me from the library, but otherwise left me to my own devises. I would avoid him most of the time, only really seeing him when I would watch him practice with his blade in the courtyard and when we occasionally had dinner together. Being curious I had made dinner for the both of us and when he came to grab something for himself, I presented it to him. He was suspicious of course but after testing the food, it soon became a trade off. He would cook some days and I would cook others, occasionally he would even answer some of the questions I had regarding witchers and their training, but always remaining fugue. And after watching him practice one afternoon I picked up one of the wooden training swords and tried to copy his movements. The wooden sword was weighted with leather so it weighed the same as a real one so in the beginning I could only manage a few swings before I get tired. This continued until one day he surprised me when I was leaning on sword using it to keep me up right. He took the sword and chewed my out for needlessly damaging my body with what I had started to consider my daily exorcise. By this time I was comfortable enough around him to argue back, foolishly I might add looking back. I asked what else I was supposed to do since he barred me from the library. 

At first I thought I crossed a line, turning my head I closed my eyes waiting for the tongue lashing that I was sure was about to happen. Surprisingly it didn’t, Eskel had just walked away and retrieved another wooden sword this one made of a much lighter material. He then showed me bits and pieces of sword work claiming if I insisted on passing time by learning sword-work I would at least learn it right and not damage my growth in the process. After that I would always join him in the courtyard when he practiced and thus began our.., maybe not friendship but at least acquaintanceship. As I would later learn, it was only due to me impressing him with a backbone he didn’t think I had, that he allowed me to continue and started to help me a little. 

Vesemir arrived a month after Eskel did and he was quite surprised to see me there. Apparently the reason he was late was that he’d stopped by Zelda’s house looking for them and upon hearing what happened had tried to find me in the city, but after a few weeks of searching he came to the conclusion that I had been either killed or taken somewhere else. So when Vesemir saw me at one of the tables in the dinner hall, even the stony faced Eskel cracked a smile at the look on Vesemir’s face. 

After learning what I had done he gave me a brief scolding about being impatient, but he eventually told me that I’d impressed him. To travel so far by myself and to make it only surviving by remembering what he’d mentioned in passing during his stories. He and Eskel discussed what they were going to do with me. The passes were already closing so I was there for the winter with them. So I stayed and continued my practice with Eskel, I’d found a really knack for sword-play. 

When winter ended I expected Vesemir to find me another home, so I spent all winter trying to convince him to train me, maybe not as a witcher, but still train me. I thought I’d made no headway all winter and expected to leave afterward, but to my surprise he offered to let me stay. witchers usually never trained women, but after watching me train all winter, they said I had talent so they would make an exception if I wanted to. And of course I jumped at the chance. They did make sure that I didn’t have any illusions about their way of life. They wanted to make sure what I knew what I was getting into.

Eskel left as soon as the passes were open to continue the path, while Vesemir stayed behind to train me. In the mornings I would run what many a witcher called the Gauntlet, a demanding route that built up my stamina, reflexes, and sense of balance. The Gauntlet was always changing, always in motion. The fallen trees that form natural catwalks over stony ravines decay with time, or plummet into the chasm. In spring the snow-melt dislodges stones form the narrow mountain paths. Winter ice makes ever second step potentially fatal. After the Gauntlet I would practice somersaults and tumbling, before moving to fencing exorcises on the training machinery within the castle itself. I was also taught with covered eyes, on wobbly catwalks, waist deep in water, or balancing on stakes planted in the ground. I was taught to bide my time and strike at the critical moment, when my very survival hung in the balance. Then at night after dinner, but before bed I’d entire the library and pore over ancient tomes, figures, both oral and written tales and legends. Vesemir told me that when facing a beast, a witcher must know exactly what he was up against and what his chances are. He must be familiar with all the ways to fight it effectively. Knowledge of an enemy’s natural habitat, daily cycle, habits, diet, and, above all else, weaknesses, is the key to victory. Then when I was struggling to stay awake I would be sent to bed. This pattern continued the whole year.

My second winter, I met the only other three School of the Wolf witchers left. Lambert, Coèn and the White Wolf himself, Geralt of Rivia. The similarities between Geralt and Eskel were staggering. They had both trained together at Kaer Morhen as boys and went through the Trial of Grass at relatively the same time. Geralt lt might be the more renowned of the two, but Eskel was at least his equal in terms of skill and experience. Having Eskel to work off of and Vesemir’s introduction, Geralt and I got along fairly well.

I hardly ever saw Coèn, but he was at least indifferent to me. Lambert and I however, had a little more of a rocky start. Lambert was the youngest of the witchers at Kaer Morhen, and perhaps the last ever trained within its walls, before I came along of course. He was arrogant with a sardonic sense of humor. His gruff and excessively blunt manner would often irritate his fellow witchers. It was only after a small bout in the fencing ring, which he’d antagonized me into, where I managed to actually land a solid blow to his side, which got a laugh out of Vesemir and Geralt. But in the end he realized that I was serious about becoming a witcher and we at least got along from that moment on.

The following years continued along this pattern. Vesemir stayed with me at Kaer Morhen, training me, though on occasion he would take me out to get some experience out in the world. Then during the winter Eskel would take over my fencing and physical practice, while Vesemir focused on my studies.

On my sixth year at Kaer Morhen, Vesemir brought another potential witcher by the name of Leo. He was a nice enough lad, age wise he had two winters on me. We would train together and often converse. He even tried to flirt with me a time or two, I hadn’t realized until much later what he was trying to do and was quick to let him know I wasn’t interested. I had no interest in romance and encounters of the sexual kind at the time. We did manage to remain friends even after I turned him down.

Two years after Leo arrived; Geralt brought a surprise guest as well. A young girl two or three years younger then myself, her name was Cirilla but everyone just called her Ciri. She and I quickly became the best of friends and with a rivalry to match. We would train together, study together, run the Gauntlet together. We had a bond that I could never have had with Leo. It was the bond of two girls to become witchers. But while she was only taught the aspects of being a witcher, I was actually training to become one. Ciri did want to become one too like her adopted father Geralt, but Triss Merigold and Yennefer were very adamant about not subjecting her to the Trials, because of her elder-blood and unique magic, at least not for a time. So she stayed at Kaer Morhen with Vesemir, Geralt, Leo, Triss and I for an entire year, before her and Geralt left. Upon her departure we swore we’d see each other again, hopefully with me as a witcher and her ready to take the Trials herself. Before leaving, she told me that she had something important to tell me when we saw each other again. Later that year she, Geralt and Yennefer went missing never to be heard from again. Coèn died soon after at the Battle of Brenna, leaving Vesemir, Eskel, Lambert, Leo and I as the last potential and true witchers of the School of Wolf.

The next year was more somber at the sudden losses and my coming Trial of Grasses.


End file.
